Search Statistics

NOTE: STATISTICAL ITEMS FROM SEPTEMBER 2004 ONWARD ARE LISTED IN THE STATS CATEGORY OF SEARCH TOPICS IN SEARCH ENGINE WATCH.

This page (formerly called The Search Engine Index) lists articles from Search Engine Watch and around the web that providing interesting facts and statistics about search. Please note that before mid-2003, the style on this page was to list a key stat rather than a summary of a particular survey.

NOTE: Article links often change, especially the older an article is. In case of a bad link, use the publication's search facility, which most have, and search for the headline. Also, some very old articles flagged "no longer online" might indeed be online -- but the former URL no longer resolves, and it's not worth the time investment for me to try and personally track down these down versus spending time producing new content.

Search engine satisfaction is up for the third year running, according to the latest figures from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Google also maintains its top ranking of several search engines named, 82 out of 100 total points that could be earned. The survey stupidly doesn't include Yahoo in the search category as well as the portal category, so we're stuck relying only on Yahoo's "portal" score of 78 for a loose comparison. Ask Jeeves came behind Google at 71.

MarketingSherpa's 2004 Search Marketing Survey found that neither marketers or their agencies felt their search marketing efforts are "very effective." But MarketingSherpa publisher and editor Anne Holland says this is in part to failures on their own tactics, rather than the medium. The report also gives the first estimate I've seen of SEO spending as opposed to paid ad spending -- $200 million versus $3.3 billion. In other words, the entire search spending pie is estimated at $3.5 billion -- and non-paid search marketing, SEO, gets about 6 percent of this. Information about buying the guide can be found here.

Nearly 100 million adults made purchases after searching for product information last year, nearly matching the number who purchased through catalogs, direct-mail ads and telemarketing calls combined, according to a Dieringer Research Group study.

Latest stats from OneStat put Google with the largest global search share, 56 percent, followed by Yahoo at 21 percent, then MSN at 9 percent. Also has demographics about major search engines as provided by Hitwise. Google is slightly more "male" than MSN Search and slightly younger.

With so much interest in search, it's amazing how relatively little research has been done into how people interact with search engines, especially from a search marketing perspective. That's finally changing.

The latest release of an iProspect study of search interaction shows women were lightly more likely to choose a paid result as relevant than men. Those with full-time jobs are also more likely to click than part-time or unemployed searchers. College graduates are more likely to see editorial listings as relevant over paid.

Nearly half of those in a Jupiter Research survey said they had branding as a search campaign goal. Yet, only 20 percent said they measured any brand gains -- compared to 70 percent who measure clicks. Gary Stein argues that more attention needs to be paid toward measuring the brand value of search.

There's a search tidbit buried in here -- Google's claim that it sends half the search traffic to gaming sites. You can also read more direct from Google. Of course, there's a good chance that a majority of that traffic comes from Google's unpaid listings, something the pitch to advertise on Google obviously doesn't mention.

Fredrick Marckini shares information out of a survey of search use that his company had conducted. Among the findings, 60 percent of clicks with to the free listings, the "natural," "organic" or "editorial" results that aren't sold. But on a per search engine basic, MSN was the lowest, getting only 29 percent of clicks to the editorial results. Google was the highest, at 72 percent. The message is that both free and paid should be considered together. I agree entirely. For more tips on getting the balance right, see this recent SearchDay article: Balancing Paid and Organic Search Listings. More about the survey of 1,649 people can also be found here.

Last month, I wrote how the switch at Yahoo to its own search technology didn't appear to have cost it users. Here are more stats saying users haven't noticed the switch. Also interesting speculation that Google was surprised by Yahoo's quality. But index size as the most important fact? No, thank you. If anything, Google's increasing index size has helped make some of its results worse, in my opinion. At some point, I'll dive back in and explain this more. But the short answer is that as many have noticed, you increasingly seem to find links to other search engine result pages in Google.

It's the relevancy, stupid. Nielsen//NetRatings found in a December 2003 poll that 52 percent said "Can find relevant information" to be the most important factor for a search engine. "Can get credible results" was next at 34 percent, followed by "Get results quickly" at 33 percent. Just changing to imitate Google's clean look isn't enough. Only 18 percent said "Has an easy to use interface" is enough. You can find complete results here.

Data from comScore Media Metrix says that searchers aren't particularly loyal to one search engine. But the data is really odd. The company calculated that the typical searcher searches 28 times in a month, then compared the average number of searches for each of the leading search engines: Google, 23, Yahoo and AOL, 16 and MSN, 11.

I guess the idea is that if everyone were loyal to Google, then it would have the highest average. The fact the others have some high numbers suggest they attract searches, as well.

There's a far better way to do this. comScore can easily calculate the crossover -- what percentage of people search at Google also search at Yahoo and so on. In fact, I've asked for this before, and I'll follow up about it again. It would paint a far better picture than these stats.

Overall, the idea that people use more than one search engine isn't surprising, new or necessarily shows "disloyalty." Disloyalty happens when people start abandoning their first choice search engine in favor of their second choice. Make that flipflop, as Google managed to AltaVista, and you win.

Article goes on to talk about the idea of personalization as a way to lock users into a particular search engine. Yahoo says to expect something later this year.

Survey says: paid listings buys will rise from 49 percent of respondents saying they do this in 2003 to 58 percent next year, while organic search engine optimization will increase from 53 percent to 63 percent.

Survey of 475 business owners found that it's practically 50/50 over whether someone knows if a listing is paid. The next question is flawed, asking what percentage of the time people click on sponsored links. If half those surveyed don't know what a sponsored link is, then including this same group in the subsequent question (as apparently was done), means you've got answers from people who don't know enough to answer at all. The same is true for another question on how often people find what they want with sponsored links.

Google far outdistances other search engines in a question on usage, and the vast majority say they'll go past the first page of search results. That's not just a remarkable stat. It goes so far against what we see with usual searcher behavior as to be suspect. I wonder if those on the survey mistook the idea of going past the first page to mean they'd look past the first page LISTED, rather than the first page of RESULTS.

Google gets top ratings for consumer satisfaction in the search engines category, according to a study by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index. Google rated 82 out of a total possible score of 100, followed by Ask Jeeves (69) and AltaVista (63). "All others" rated 78. Stupidly, search portals such as Yahoo weren't included. Instead, they were segregated into a separate portals category, where Yahoo came in tops at 78, followed by MSN at 74 and 65 for AOL. So -- Ask Jeeves could fairly say it's the second best search engine in terms of satisfaction, but had portals been included in that category, it might be a much different story.

Research commissioned for the Internet Advertising Bureau's search engine committee finds that conversion often happens weeks after the initial clickthrough from a search engine. Sponsored search results apparently generated what I assume is an average 18.3 percent clickthrough rate, compared to a 4.3 percent rate for free organic listings. The figures are surprising to me, and not having yet seen the actual report, I can't comment further on the methodology used. Sponsored listings also were found to have a greater conversion rate, which isn't surprising to me. With paid listings, you have the ability to deliver people to a very targeted landing page that can constantly be refined to improve conversion. You can't do that well with organic listings.

Paid search listings will total $1.6 billion by the end of 2003, making up 25 percent of total online advertising spending. Two years ago, it made up only 10 percent of spending.Jupiter Research, July 2003Search Powers Online Ad Revival

How are people tracking the success of search engine marketing campaigns? Most, 41 percent, say they track clickthrough or "general activity," which I presume would be log analysis of site traffic and perhaps even rank checking. Then 31 percent say they do no measuring at all, followed by 16 percent that measure conversions and 11 percent who measure ROI.

Another stat shows that 35 percent are currently evaluating search engine marketing as part of their overall marketing mix (it's unclear whether this is paid listings, organic listings or both). Then 23 percent say SEM is a significant part of their mix, while the same amount say they don't do it at all. Finally, 18 percent say SEM is a small part of the mix. Stats are from a survey done by WebTrends and iProspect, across 800 marketers that participated in a web conference.

Covers new search popularity figures released in April by comScore as well as data-mining that comScore is promising that can be applied for search engine marketing efforts. Also covers other major metrics providers, such as Nielsen//NetRatings, Alexa and StatMarket.

Readers of Interbrand's BrandChannel.com named Google brand of the year for 2002. Out of 1,315 votes, Google received 15 percent, followed by second place Apple with 14 percent, Coca-Cola with 12 percent and Starbucks with 11 percent.Interbrand, Feb. 2003Google Named Brand of the Year

41 percent of those who went to a web site to research a product purchase got there via search engines, the top referral choiceDoubleClick, Dec. 2002Search Engines' Influence on Shopping

The main reason for using shopping search services was to compare prices quickly (73%), followed by wanting to compare products (54%) and to find stores selling the products (45%).DealTime Survey, Dec. 2002Shopping Search Engine Users

Paid submission to Yahoo and LookSmart and paid listings with GoTo are the most popular paid participation programs, each used by over 30 percent of webmasters surveyed.CyberAtlas, August 2001Surplus Of Search Engine Marketing Reports

Nine out of ten web users visit a search engine, portal or community site each month. They also revisit frequently, nearly five times per month.Nielsen//NetRatings, May 2001Three Site Types Dominate Surfing Habits

Searchers generally only visit the first three web sites listed in search results, and one out of five visits will last for a minute or less, based on an analysis of 450,000 queries run on AllTheWeb in a 24 hour period. More than half of all searchers will visit only one site in the top results and more than 80 percent will stop after visiting three. Only 19 percent will go to the second page of results and fewer than 10 percent go to the third page.Penn State, February 2001Impatient web searchers measure web sites' appeal in seconds

Marketers checking on search engine rankings generated half a million queries per day at Northern Light using position checking software -- the numbers are probably similar or more for other major search engines.I-Search #252, Sept. 2000Northern Light Block

4.6 Million People Can't Find What They Need On The NetWebTop/MORI, July 19, 2000 --no longer online --

A poll for search engine WebTop.com, conducted by research firm MORI, found that only 18 percent of those in Great Britain say they find what they are looking for on the web. Also, 67 percent said they are frustrated when searching for information. The survey was conducted in June, among 600 Internet users.

Search engines are the leading way users in the United Kingdom locate web sites. 81% said search engines helped them find sites. Following links was the next most popular method (59%).Forrester Research, May 2000In UK, Search Engines Are Top Method To Find Sites

A survey of 18 major search engines found searchers more likely to find the official US presidential candidate web sites of Bill Bradley and John McCain than those of Al Gore and George W. Bush.Search Engine Watch, Feb. 29, 2000Can You Find Your Candidate?

57% of Internet users search the web each day, making search the second most popular Internet activity. 46% say they look for product info, making this the third most popular activity. Email is the most popular activity, with 81% checking each day.SRI, Feb. 17, 2000New Study Shows Internet Users Are Loyal to Web "Niches"

Over 75 percent of people will try a different search on the same search engine if their first search fails, rather than try their original search at a different search engine.NPD, Jan-March 2000NPD Search and Portal Site Study

42% of those who bought from online retail sites arrived via search engines. Entering the URL directly was the most popular method (60%), followed by using bookmarks (48%).NFO, Oct. 1999NFO Online Retail Monitor

1 in every 28 page views on the Web is a search results page (3.5 percent of all page views)Alexa, June 1, 1999 --press release no longer online--

Internet users ranked search as their most important activity, awarding it a 9.1 on a 10-point scale. The next most important activity ranked only 6.3.Jupiter Research, 1999 --press release no longer online--

Discusses how old media is behind many of the top portal contenders in Europe, as opposed to new media companies that dominate them in the US. The Jupiter Communications-provided chart will please those who've been looking for stats about top search and navigation sites in Europe.

NPD released the results of a survey providing a range of interesting statistics about search engine users. The survey was conducted during Summer 1997 on AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler and Yahoo.

The U.K. Supreme Court has granted permission in part for Google to appeal against a ruling relating to a dispute over the user information through cookies via use of the Apple Safari browser.
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